Daily Life in the Hunter's Dream: A Metaphysical Euphoria
by PathofOdinSonofThor
Summary: The Good Hunter had left the Doll alone in the dream and it was beginning to take its toll on her. His absence was maddening. Would he return to her? Or had he already succumbed to the terrors of the Nightmare? After having met him, the Doll could only ponder over how much she needed him to live. Doll X Hunter Fluff one shot series.


**Daily Life in the Hunter's Dream: A Metaphysical Euphoria**

The sun never shined in the Hunter's Dream. The Doll had become used to the dreary and drab atmosphere of the pocket dimension, never changing and unending, but after she met the Good Hunter for the first time, everything seemed a little brighter. The smile never lost her face as she did her daily chores around the Rest. Unlike normal, this smile was genuine, and not just a simple habit or period of muscle memory stretching across her cheeks, a motion that only occurred because it had to. She was made to be happy, to please the hunters and give them peace. Smiling often wasn't a choice. However, after having actually had the opportunity to meet one of the hunters she was meant to care for, after having spoken with him, a luxury she had never known before, the smile she wore was purely authentic. She was truly happy.

A few weeks had past since the Good Hunter had left her in the Dream and returned to Yharnam to continue his hunt. He didn't have any clues where to go to begin his journey, but after Gehrman had expressed to him that the only way to end the Nightmare was to halt the scourge of beasts, showing the first signs of any mental acuity since she was born, the Doll knew that it would be a long time before she would see him again. If she saw him at all, that is. The nature of the hunt was deadly, playing at the deepest, darkest fears that any human may have possessed. The creatures themselves were often ironically described as being indescribable. The hunters with deeper insight, however, and admittedly, a greater amount of intelligence than the more brutish of their kind, were able to at least explain certain traits and features of the beasts, detailing prehensile tentacles, gelatinous masses of eyes, and other such morbidity that could easily drive someone mad. Very often, hunters would lose their minds in the Nightmare, engaging beasts whose very presence destroyed them mentally. Other times, hunters would engage stronger enemies than they were capable of fighting as forms of suicide, or lobotomizing themselves by use of the mind flayers that stalked the streets of the city, and worst of all, some would even simply lose themselves. Albeit rarely, hunters would delve fully their mutation, then become fully engulfed in the newfound strength of their upgraded physical forms, choosing to do nothing more than kill, and becoming just like the beasts they hunt.

It was as if the mastermind behind this charade, this mission to overthrow the Oedon Church which ministered the blood that created the beast plague, wanted nothing more than puppets to carry out his orders. None of them had a single amount of insight. Not one of the hunters that appeared in the dream were capable of meeting the Doll, seeing that she was more than a husk of emptiness and that she could pass for something similar to pleasant company until this last one, her Good Hunter. After the first few visitors to the Dream had come and then disappeared, the Doll held little hope that she would ever fulfill her purpose, or that she would ever have the chance to know them. No one had ever made a second trip. They would always succumb to the Nightmare, and perhaps that made it easier for her to never make any kind of attachments to any of them, but perhaps this time would be different? The Good Hunter was able to sense her presence on his first visit. Maybe that would help him survive? Maybe he would come back to her?

For the first time in years, the Doll found herself holding out hope that the last person to discover the Dream would be the first to be able to return. This foreigner was the first to see her, to speak with her, to touch her, to hold her, and she was unable to contain the joy that this filled her with, but following that hope was fear. If the Hunter didn't come back to her, what would she do? How would she cope? When he was gone, it left a strong pain in her chest because she didn't know how soon it would be for him to die or become beastly.

Weeks passed, and the Good Hunter was still missing, the hope that he had filled the Doll with having long since expired, and even her artificial smile, the one she was forced to wear had left with it. This is what comes with joy- sadness, regret, and grief. It was if the loss of and each every hunter before him and the pain that had come with their deaths were hitting her all at once, and if she had possessed tears, they would have been spilling. Her masquerade of breath had deteriorated into a cacophony of sobs. There was still a small amount of doubt that perhaps her Good Hunter, her first ever friend and the only intelligent creature she had any real connection with would suddenly reappear from the lamppost at the tombstones leading up to the cabin, so perhaps she hadn't fully given up. She could feel herself fighting to keep up her strength. She sat on her perch where her physical body appeared to lay to those who couldn't see her. Her legs were crossed at the knee, swinging depressively, her hands resting on her lap as she subconsciously studied the overlapping layers of wood that allowed her fingers to move, twiddling them slowly. She wanted to believe he would return, but this far off desire was becoming less and less realistic as the hours ticked by. It was filling her with so much negativity, so much emptiness that she wasn't even able to pick up a broom to sweep the steps, prim the roses, or care for her little cuties like they deserved.

Suddenly, her face was lifted up by something. She felt the fingers of a coarse, leather glove wrap themselves around her cheeks surprisingly gently, the blood that drenched them wetting her synthetic flesh, then shifting to cup her chin. Her cobalt blue eyes, made entirely of glass, looked up at her captor with trepidation, opened widely enough for him to see the underlying sadness within them. Behind the shredded tricorne over his shoulder length black hair and the thick bandana over his mouth, both of which drowned in more blood than a human body could possess, accenting his golden irises, he examined her carefully. What was he thinking? Who was he? The man looked deadly yet exhausted, being weighed down by his leather long coat and vest, thick clasps over the latter, as well as the armor on his arms and legs, as if he had fought through the armies of Hell just to reach the Dream.

If he was a hunter, he was clearly a powerful one. He would have to be in order to appear in the Dream without alerting the Doll to his presence, and the copious amounts of experience on the battlefield was made clear judging by the murderous glint in his wolfish gaze. If the Doll pulled down his mask, she might be able to see if beasthood had set in yet should the length of his canines been extended. It wouldn't have made sense, though, because no beast, even if they were a hunter as skilled as this one was, would be able to invade the Hunter's Dream. They would have the desire to do so, let alone possess the knowledge of its existence or how to get inside. Why and how was he here? It crossed the Doll's mind that this hunter might have been an enemy, looking to kill Gehrman and destroy the alternate space the Dream resided in, but if that were true, Gehrman would have jumped forward and killed him. He was the First Hunter, progenitor of all schools of the hunt and the originator of all styles of combat surrounding it. He had earned his place as Caretaker of the Hunter's Dream. He was beyond any doubt one of the most powerful beings in the world, in all of history and possibly the cosmos, so if this man meant any harm to the Dream, or even to the Doll herself, then Gehrman would have wasted no time in protecting his keepsake.

Then again, the First Hunter couldn't even wipe his own chin most of the time. Whimpering, the Doll looked up at the hunter before her, staring at the incomparable, indiscriminate, unreadable look in his eyes, and watched with fright as he looked her over. Frozen in place, she could only watch helplessly as he leaned down and held his face inches from hers. Gehrman had warned her about all of the hunters who took the hunt too seriously, the ones who would use her for all kinds of immoral, and often lecherous purposes, and the Doll could only wonder if this man was such a monster. She closed her eyes in grieving resignation. If this man wanted her for his dark designs, to play games with her and treat her like the object that she truly was, then true to her creation, she would have no choice but to accept it, but finally facing that situation that she was made for, even having been warned about it for years, she was suddenly fully aware of how much she didn't want to face it. If there was a way to remove this burden for her, she wanted to take it. She wanted to appeal to the Moon Presence, or the Outer God Cthulhu to rescue her from the Hell she was about to experience, but instead, she found herself only asking one thing.

"Oh, Good Hunter," she muttered tearily, "Why did you leave me alone?"

"Finally!" the hunter before her exclaimed, "And here I was beginning to think you didn't recognize me!" The Doll's eyes opened wearily to see that her prayers were answered. All of the worry she had just gone through by this man's presence, all of the fright was for naught, because as he dropped the mask to his neck and took off his tricorne, the grinning face of the Doll's Good Hunter was there staring down at her. Her face crinkled up into that of relief, ready to spill tears if she had them. Unable to cry, she instead tackled the Good Hunter to the ground and buried her face into his chest, wailing uncontrollably.

"Oh, Good Hunter!" she cried, "You scared me! I thought you would never return and then when you showed up in this new outfit I thought you were someone else! Why did you have to scare me like that? Please don't leave me again so soon! I want you to stay for at least a little while! I don't want you to leave so quickly again! You're the first friend I have ever had, and I- I… hmm…"

"Better?" The Hunter asked as he ran his hands through her hair as gently as he could, holding his other one around the Doll's waist and holding her tightly to his chest as he smiled down at her.

"Uh huh…" the Doll nuzzled into the Hunter's muscled pectorals in sweet euphoria, her previously sobbing face softening as the comforting ministrations worked its way through her body, making her nonexistent muscles relax, and once again finding herself being lost in the Hunter's warmth.

"Good," he whispered, the soothing tone further making the Doll melt, "I missed you too…"

"Where did you go? You were gone for so long," The Doll asked, somehow finding the courage and the godly amount of effort it took to pull away from him and sit up so she could look at him. With the change in position, she was now straddling the Hunter's hips. He didn't know if she was aware of the kind of discomfort this was giving him below his breeches, and judging by her neutral expression, she probably didn't, but he didn't want her to feel unwanted as she probably had felt for the past few weeks, so he didn't push her off. Hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do. Instead, he propped one knee up for her to lean against so her lower back would be more comfortable, and folded both of his arms behind his head.

"Come on, Doll," he replied to her, his voice having a slight drawl as he mentioned the Doll's name, making it feel more like a term of endearment than a title and making her blush a little, "I'm pretty sure you know where I was. I'm a hunter. I hunt. Just like you, a wooden doll, is meant to look pretty. It's what we're meant to do, and might I say, I don't know how I'm turning out, but you at least fill your roll perfectly a dozen times over."

The Doll blushed, her face growing hotter by the second at his words and the careless way with which he presented this description of her. She couldn't help but look away. Her eyes fluttered dreamily and her hand quickly shot up to her lips in an attempt to hide her embarrassment. Looking at her this way, the Hunter couldn't help but think how adorable this girl, this living Doll truly was, and that the person who created her was a godsend to humanity, and the patron of this masterpiece a very lucky man. As her gorgeous blue eyes glanced back at him, it seemed that he was that man now. He never would have thought getting trapped in the Nightmare would have been a good thing, but this animated hunk of wood, pleasantly attractive as it was, had him questioning that. If someone like him could find this kind of companionship in such a twisted landscape as the Nightmare, then he was perhaps a very lucky man indeed.

"Good- Good Hunter," the Doll tried to regain her composure, "Do you really believe that?"

"That I'm probably not doing my job correctly? Of course!" The Hunter grinned as he teased the Doll, chuckling at the conscious avoidance of her question. The Doll even responded in kind, giggling to herself at the Hunter's playful dismissal of her query and slapping his chest with the same kind of jovial expression, admonishing him lightly.

"Good Hunter!" she chided, "So caddy!" They laughed together, enjoying the other's pleasant company as they stood back up and the Doll led the Hunter into the Hunter's Rest. Behind the altar in the back of the room, a trapdoor was lifted by the Hunter's caretaker and she led him down a spiral staircase into a brightly lit room filled with all sorts of homely amenities like a stove for cooking and a working shower which the Hunter excitedly jumped into, grateful for the Doll having washed his uniform when he stepped out and his mouth watering as he watched cook a plate of baked ziti and roasted zucchini for him. As much of an abyssal horror as the Nightmare was, the Dream was just that. It seemed comforting, and as the Doll served his plate and sat across from him with her fingers laced under her chin, and a bright smile breaking across her lips, the Hunter frightfully realized that this Dream, this subset of the worst kind of place imaginable, honestly made him feel at home.

 _This place is a simmering cesspool of Lovecraftian horrors and nightmares galore_ , the Hunter thought to himself, staring up at the smiling form of the Doll, _But maybe it won't be so bad._


End file.
